U.S. Insists On Keeping Control Of Internet

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-09-30 10:15am

A U.S. official strongly objected to any notion of a U.N. body taking control of the domain servers that direct traffic on the Internet."
From the article: "'We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet,' said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. 'Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable.'
Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet as a Pentagon project and funding much of its early development."

Considering the Bush administrations attempts (Succesful one's too!) to destroy the .xxx domain and the legal porn squad, I can see why this should go through, I doubt that the US will be willing to give up a source of such political dick wagging

Full article[/quote]

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-09-30 12:09pm

Considering the Bush administrations attempts (Succesful one's too!) to destroy the .xxx domain and the legal porn squad,

Do you really think that the FBI porn squad would have any more or less authority to carry out their assignment if the US were to no longer be in charge of the root domain servers?

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2005-09-30 01:35pm

The way I see it, why mess with a working formula? True, you can point to unfavorable rates for some countries and a few other snaggles, but for the most part, the U.S. has done an excellent job with the Internet. Turning it over might solve the few problems we see without creating any more, or it might create far worse ones. That's not a gamble that I like.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2005-09-30 01:38pm

Can you explain to a layperson like me how precisely the US controls the internet? I thought the internet is composed of a series of servers all over the world that are interconnected (hence wordl wide web) and I know the Internet began in the US starting with Defense Dept. computers interconnected way back when but how does that equal control in the here and now?

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2005-09-30 01:43pm

Of course America could control it - Al Gore created it, after all. :p

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2005-09-30 01:54pm

The internet, and most particularly the routing of information packets on it, is an upside down heirarchic structure.

When you send a request for a webpage, like sd.net, to your ISP, your ISP takes that address and goes to one of the thirteen root servers, and asks which Top Level Domain server it should go to to find out about .net addresses. It then goes and asks that TLD server for the address of Stardestroyer.net, finds the IP address, and sends the request for the index page to the sd.net server.

The TLD servers are controlled by ICANN, which is under the control of the US State Department. Of course, this means that if the state department doesn't like the idea of having a new TLD, even if every other country in the world wants it, it won't happen.

They claim that this is OK because they invented the internet, but the current system of URLs, HTTP, and HTML, which makes up the human readable component of the internet, and allows things like commerce and websites was actually invented at CERN in Switzerland by an Englishman.

The obvious response, of course, will be to do what China has done, and build a seperate structure of TLDs and root servers for the rest of the world.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-09-30 01:56pm

Stravo wrote:Can you explain to a layperson like me how precisely the US controls the internet? I thought the internet is composed of a series of servers all over the world that are interconnected (hence wordl wide web) and I know the Internet began in the US starting with Defense Dept. computers interconnected way back when but how does that equal control in the here and now?

They can't, but some of these whackaloons are so out of touch with technology that they like to think that because Americans can access it, they should be able to control all of it.

KHL · Post by **KHL** » 2005-10-04 09:06pm

But honestly, do you really trust the UN?

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2005-10-04 11:57pm

To a significant extent more then the US State department. Not to say that any of this really makes a difference either way, there'd be consequences if they ever did anything stupid.